What happens when 'fun' corporate retreats cross a line

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What happens when 'fun' corporate retreats cross a line     In April 2022, six months after he first joined a London-based start-up, Jamie found himself on a five-day corporate retreat in France. At first, he was excited at the prospect of an all-expenses paid trip abroad. But the retreat turned out awkward, even unnerving.“The first day, we took part in lots of trust exercises and icebreakers with one another, which was incredibly cringeworthy,” says 23-year-old Jamie. “But the worst part was a brainstorming session where I was paired with a really senior member of the team and had to throw out ideas for how to grow the business.”  Continued here

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The Four-Day Workweek: How to Make It Work in Your Organization     Our summer special report helps leaders gain a comprehensive view of risks, learn how to overcome market disrupters, and manage the analytical tools that provide predictive insight for decision-making.Our summer special report helps leaders gain a comprehensive view of risks, learn how to overcome market disrupters, and manage the analytical tools that provide predictive insight for decision-making.It started with Barnes’s own New Zealand company, Perpetual Guardian, when he wondered whether his staff members could do their jobs better if they worked the equivalent of four days instead of five. It would be crucial, he knew, to still deliver the same output, customer service, and profitability. He landed on what he calls the 100-80-100 rule: “We pay 100% income for 80% time, as long as we get 100% output.” Continued here

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Five parts of the economy that are hit when house prices fall     UK house price growth is slowing. While prices rose 1.2% in June compared to last year, this is down on May’s 1.9% growth, according to property website Zoopla. Its house price index – which forecasts a 5% fall in house prices this year – also shows that 42% of sellers are now accepting offers of more than 5% below asking price, the highest level since 2018.This may be seen as a positive for first-time buyers who have been subject to steadily rising prices in recent years. But the Bank of England’s decision to crank up interest rates to combat inflation over the past year means that mortgage costs have been rising. This is squeezing people’s affordability and offsetting some of the relief over falling prices. Indeed, mortgage borrowing has reached the lowest level on record (excluding the period since the onset of the COVID pandemic), according to Bank of England data. Continued here

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No Hard Feelings: Jennifer Lawrence in Hollywood's coyest sex comedy     In a widely reported comment about her punningly-titled No Hard Feelings, Jennifer Lawrence said: "Everybody in some sense will be offended by this film – you're welcome." Wishful thinking on her part. Tame and inoffensive, No Hard Feelings is Hollywood's coyest sex comedy. Lawrence's character, Maddie (who's 32), is hired by 19-year-old Percy's parents to "date" him, as they put it, so he doesn't head off to college a virginal wallflower. That high concept was so full of edgy comic potential that Sony's publicity and the media coverage bought into the studio's talking points about the film being outrageous and subversive.In fact, it's retro, following the lead of Pretty Woman, playing into the "Wholesome Escort" meme. But that coyness reveals larger social trends. The modest success of its opening weekend – Variety characterised the $15m US box office as "not bad" – speaks to the audience's hunger for sex comedies, even this bland one. Yet the film also reveals how cautious Hollywood studios remain about sex, especially at a time when the cultural politics of the US is torn between an ever-more conservative right wing and the progressive left. Continued here

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The Titan disaster could suggest deep sea diving is risky -- history shows that's far from the truth     The tragic death of five people when the Titan submersible imploded during its descent to the wreck of the Titanic has led some to describe deep-diving submersibles as inherently risky. But their history shows that this is far from the case. Bathyspheres were unpowered submersibles lowered into the sea on a cable and used for pioneering dives in the early 1930s. Since then, submersibles have taken many more people into the deep ocean than the number of humans who have been into space. None of those submersible dives have previously experienced a catastrophic hull failure. The investigation of the Titan will now seek to understand why it was an exception. Continued here

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Overtime Elite - a private school, basketball league and media conglomerate - just sent two players to the NBA     When Overtime Elite held its first pro day in October 2022, its arena in Atlanta was charged with anticipation.Families, scouts and fans gathered to witness the unveiling of the next generation of prodigious basketball talent. I watched the event on a YouTube livestream, which broadcast the players shooting, running sprints and leaping for slam dunks. Continued here

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English dialects make themselves heard in genes     If you need to hit a nail, what tool do you ask for? If you say “hammer,” do you pronounce the “r”? Do you drop the “h”?Different people pronounce the same English words in different ways. People learn which words to use and how to pronounce them as they’re learning to talk with family, friends and others in their community, so geographic patterns in these pronunciations can persist over time. Continued here

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LGBTQ+ parents are being removed from their children's birth certificates in Italy - here's what's behind this disturbing trend     Max Weber Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute A public prosecutor in the Italian city of Padova is attempting to challenge the legitimacy of 33 birth certificates of children born to same-sex couples via insemination by a donor. The prosecutor, Valeria Sanzani, also seeks to remove the names of the mothers considered “non-genetic” from the birth certificates. Continued here

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US music education has a history of anti-Blackness that is finally being confronted     When it comes to achieving racial diversity, music education at the university level in the U.S. still has a long way to go. One of the leading professional organizations, the Society for Music Theory, put it bluntly in 2020: “We humbly acknowledge that we have much work to do to dismantle the whiteness and systemic racism that deeply shape our discipline,” the group wrote. Continued here

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Are You Failing to Prepare the Next Generation of C-Suite Leaders? - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM DAGGERWING     For many people leaders, that’s been the mantra for the past three years. “Let’s just get through this moment in time, focus on the short-term solutions for our immediate needs, and when things go back to normal, we’ll deal with all the issues we’ve been putting on the backburner.” Continued here

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Medical students honor body donors through words, deeds and ceremonies     Six people were charged on June 14, 2023, with buying and selling human remains stolen from the Harvard Medical School morgue and from an Arkansas mortuary. The macabre story made national headlines, particularly the indictment of Cedric Lodge: a morgue manager at Harvard from 1995 until earlier this year.Much of this happens behind closed doors. The serious scientific work of anatomical study is undergirded by practices that promote the donors’ dignity, including memorial ceremonies to honor their gift. I conducted a census of allopathic medical schools – schools that grant the M.D. degree – and analyzed recordings of 60 donor memorial ceremonies, as well as other materials. Continued here

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Why six-pack abs are so hard to achieve - and maintain     Many people start going to the gym in the hopes of achieving what has long been seen as the holy grail of health and fitness: six-pack abdominal muscles (abs). But as many people who have tried will attest – including celebrities, such as comedian Eric André – this can be far more challenging than expected. André even equated the experience of trying to achieve a six-pack with being like a full-time job in and of itself.There are many reasons why “getting ripped” is so difficult. It requires sustained hard work and a strict diet – and may also come at the cost of good health. Continued here

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The New York Times worried that publishing the Pentagon Papers would destroy the newspaper -- and the reputation of the US     The late Daniel Ellsberg was a former government contractor who leaked the classified history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. In doing so, Ellsberg, who died on June 16, accelerated a shift in public opinion against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and, some historians argue, led the Nixon administration to become ever more paranoid and secretive, eventually leading to the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation. Continued here

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Batteries in electric vehicles have more mileage in city driving rather than highway driving     A Toyota Corolla with a 1.8L engine requires 6.2 litres of gas to drive for 100 kilometres on a highway. But on city roads, it would require 7.9 litres of gas. A 2022 Ford F-150 requires 9.4 and 12.1 litres per 100 km for highway and city driving, respectively.Traditional fuel-powered automobiles, powered by the internal combustion engines, give higher mileage on a highway compared to city roads. Various factors can affect the driving efficiency of a vehicle. Continued here

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From raising the global sea level to crushing life on the seafloor -- here's why you should care about icebergs     Late in the evening of April 14 1912, the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg in the north-west Atlantic. In just over two and a half hours, the Titanic sank, claiming the lives of 1,514 people.The Titanic disaster is one good reason to understand icebergs better. But their significance extends far beyond posing a risk to ships and other offshore structures. Icebergs are crucial to monitor because of their profound impact on the natural world and human societies. Continued here

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Politicians believe voters to be more conservative than they really are     In Germany, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won a district council election for the first time on Monday. Robert Sesselmann’s victory as district administrator – the equivalent of a mayor – in the Eastern town of Sonneberg comes only a day after Greece’s conservatives clinched an outright majority in the country’s parliamentary polls, topping left-wing parties Syriza and Pasok. Meanwhile, the Spanish left is also bracing for an early general election on 23 July, after losing to the Spanish conservative Partido Popular (PP) and far-right Vox parties in May.In an influential 2018 study, David Broockman and Christopher Skovron showed that US politicians overestimated the share of citizens who held conservative views. On questions related to state intervention in the economy, gun control, immigration, or abortion, the majority of both Republicans and Democratic representatives surveyed believed that a greater share of citizens supported right-wing policies than what public-opinion data revealed. Continued here

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Pastoralists are an asset to the world - and we have a lot to learn from them     Pastoralists are livestock keepers who are frequently on the move, sometimes across huge distances. Following mobile lifestyles and living far from centres of power, they are often inaccurately dismissed as backward and in need of modernisation. Many policies are directed at transforming mobile pastoralists into settled agriculturalists or urban dwellers. This aims at recasting them into the dominant image of “civilised” living. And, despite their positive contributions to livelihoods, economies and the environment, the world’s many millions of pastoralists have been vilified as contributors to climate change and destroyers of the environment. Continued here

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Albania's brain drain: why so many young people are leaving and how to get them to stay     About 46,460 Albanians left the country in 2022. This exodus was 10.5% higher than in 2021, with the majority, about 36,000, being young people, according to new data from the Albanian Institute of Statistics. This data also shows that fewer Albanian young people are entering the labour force and completing their studies. For example, in the academic year 2021-2022, about 30,910 students graduated from higher education, marking a 5.4% decrease from the previous academic year. Continued here

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How metro mayors are getting things done -- even if they have limited money and power     The word “mayor”, in the English governance landscape, refers to many different roles. Until the turn of the 21st century, it mostly described non-partisan ceremonial leaders of towns and boroughs in England and Wales, most often elected by councillors. The further ceremonial title of Lord Mayor was conferred by royal letters patent on the leaders of the nation’s biggest cities. Directly elected mayors, by contrast, are a new phenomenon. The first, introduced in 2000, was the Mayor of London – currently Sadiq Khan – who is responsible for the Greater London Authority, a collection of 19 local authorities. Continued here

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How Ernest Hemingway transformed Pamplona and the Sanfermines     Jake Barnes is an American newspaper correspondent working in Paris in 1922. Cohn, a friend who wanders around. Brett, the beautiful divorcee who has turned the French capital into a platform between two trains. Mike, the promise of a husband she has procured in the meantime. And Bill, a friend of Jake’s who only seems to think about fishing.Ernest Hemingway brings together all of them, and the bullfighter Pedro Romero, a transcript of the Niño de la Palma, in the Pamplona of The Sun Also Rises (1926). Continued here

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Americans in former Confederate states more likely to say violent protest against government is justified, 160 years after Gettysburg     Over the July Fourth long weekend, people will pour into the small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to commemorate the 160th anniversary of one of the deadliest battles in U.S. history.The three-day battle left over 50,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead, wounded or missing and cemented Gettysburg’s place in American history as the turning point of the Civil War. Continued here

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I'm one of the UK's official climate change advisers - our new report says the country is no longer a world leader     The UK’s Climate Change Committee – the official independent advisory body of which I am interim chair – has spent the past three months poring over thousands of pages of government strategy documents to inform its latest annual progress report to parliament. And our confidence in the UK meeting its climate goals is now markedly less than it was in our previous assessment a year ago. Key opportunities have been missed. Before the COP27 Glasgow climate summit in 2021, the UK committed to reduce emissions by 68% by 2030. Every country that signed the Paris Agreement set a pledge – and this was the UK’s. If the country is to deliver it in only seven years, the rate of annual emissions reduction outside the electricity supply sector must nearly quadruple, increasing from its current value of 1.2% per year to 4.5% per year. Every year that the government fails to up the pace, it becomes harder the next year – and the scale by which action needs to multiply becomes larger. Continued here

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Cosmological models are built on a simple, century-old idea -- but new observations demand a radical rethink     Our ideas about the Universe are based on a century-old simplification known as the cosmological principle. It suggests that when averaged on large scales, the Cosmos is homogeneous and matter is distributed evenly throughout.This allows a mathematical description of space-time that simplifies the application of Einstein’s general theory of relativity to the Universe as a whole. Continued here

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Poetry goes nuclear: 3 recent books delve into present anxieties, finding beauty amid the terror     It seemed to me for many years that thoughts of nuclear catastrophe were anachronistic. Was that ignorance and complacency on my part? Probably. After all, there were always rumblings about proliferation, Iran and North Korea, India and Pakistan and Israel. But they did not feel like existential threats to those of us living in Australia. Am I alone in feeling this way? Was it less a question of the tyranny of distance than anaesthetising privilege? Terrorism, yes – domestic and international – but not nuclear catastrophe. Continued here

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Why so many people have had enough of experts - and how to win back trust     When senior British politician Michael Gove announced in 2016 that the public had “had enough of experts” in the lead up to the Brexit vote, it highlighted a growing trend for questioning the authority and power of experts. Only last month, the home secretary, Suella Braverman, took to the stage at the National Conservatism conference to rail against “experts and elites”. Such comments form part of a broader pattern where experts and their authority have faced significant challenges and threats from various economic, political, social and cultural sources. Continued here